The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, the approaches described in this section may not be prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Facsimile (fax) technology has long been a popular approach for electronic transmission of documents. While electronic mail (e-mail) has become a dominant form of electronic communication, faxing documents remains an extremely popular approach.
Advantages of faxing documents are apparent when a user seeks to transmit a document via electronic means. One approach to transmit a document electronically is to scan the document, save the file generated by the scanner, attach the file to an e-mail and send the e-mail. This approach is cumbersome and prone to errors, such as attaching an incorrect file. Problems may exist with the reception of the e-mail; for example, the recipient may be unable or unwilling to receive file attachments because of the potential of virus infection. The attachment may be in a format unrecognized by the recipient, or the recipient may not have the necessary software to read the attachment. Font conflicts may make the scanned document look different than the original when the scanned document is opened on the recipient's computer. If an attachment is large, it may take significant time to transmit and may exceed the designated amount of storage for recipient's e-mail.
In large part, faxing approaches do not suffer from these shortcomings. A document may be generated and then transmitted via fax in quick succession. Because the document is converted to a format understood by the receiving fax device and the fax is printed directly at the receiving fax device, the document is accurately reproduced. There is no need for the recipient to download an e-mail attachment, scan the attachment for viruses, open the attachment in a program, and then print the document locally.
Many documents currently are generated using computer technology, and most modern computers have networking capability, either through a modem or high-speed networking technology such as Ethernet and TCP/IP. One approach to faxing documents from a personal computer utilizing networking technologies allows users to create a document that is converted to a fax format and transmit the document through a multi-function printing device (MFP) to a receiving fax device instead of printing the document and using a separate fax machine to transmit the document.
It is common for a user to generate a fax cover page to identify various information about a fax, such as: the sender's name, sender's phone and Fax number, recipient's name and phone number, and the number of pages transmitted. One approach to sending a fax from a personal computer including the creation of a cover page starts with a user creating a document, such as a letter, on a personal computer and sending the document to a fax driver. The user then provides recipient information, such as the recipient's name, fax number, number of pages, and any other information supported by the fax driver. The fax driver then generates a cover page based on the provided information and merges the cover page and the user document into a fax job. The computer's operating system (OS) renders the fax job into a document format specific to the OS, and the fax driver converts the fax job into a fax format and transmits the fax job through a fax modem or through a fax-capable MFP device.
There are drawbacks to this approach. The fax driver must be capable of generating a document (the fax cover page), which is additional functionality that may not be available for some devices. Additionally, it may not be feasible to merge the fax cover page and the document, because the page sizes or other specifications may be different.
Another approach to faxing from a personal computer is to use a dedicated fax utility. For example, a user may create a document to be faxed. The user then launches a separate fax utility wherein the user enters information to populate a fax cover page, attaches the document to be faxed, and sends the document and cover page. Drawbacks to this approach include the need for a separate fax utility program, potential restrictions on the document format that may be attached, and a lengthy and unnatural workflow.
Consequently, there is a need in the art for a faxing solution allows for the creation and transmittal of a fax cover page that does not suffer from the aforementioned shortcomings of current approaches.